Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? (1966)

Slothrop: I was always suspicious of chick-lit, and this film confirmed and embodied all of my fears. It might, really, be the most terrifying film I have ever seen. Mostly, Slothrop prefers bouncing melons over marital disintegration but he's a simple man. Yuck, yuck, yuck and some serious misgivings about watching this in the dark during the day.

Boris: Terrible thing, our proclivity for lying. Deceit is a powerful force, and a fun game, which is why the saddest and most certain part of life involves cultivating some trivial fantasy one dull March morning, letting it grow for a few dozen years, and then, oh, I don't know, one night when the new Biologist and his chickee visit for drinks, a lot of drinks, killing that fantasy in front of everyone, including its co-creator.

People who never read his plays or watch them performed hassle Edward Albee for his airy absurdist maneuvers, such as having Martha cry at the news that her entirely fictional son has just died, when they should be shuddering at his knack for excavating those cryptic, useless things we call persons. I don't know about you, but I feel shocked--genuinely shocked--when I discover that, like Martha, I've been playing games my whole stupid life. Games that hurt people. Games built on fantasy. In fact, and I'll be perfectly honest about it, before we found the glorious, golden, everlasting love of the gentle giant and his bellicose friend, my girl and I bought a stuffed toy rabbit, named it, and started playing. Our games were smart and intricate. By the time I had to kill him off, as George does his son, I felt a real loss, not some arbitrary conclusion or petty end. My family shrank, even if that part of it never existed. I ached for the loss of my fantasy.

We all do it, and we'll continue to do it, even knowing that what we're doing is unnatural and sick and totally grotesque. We'll do it because we have to. Otherwise, we may love each other like real people, or plainly exist, and that possibility is too frightening to consider.

But maybe that's just because I come from Ukraine.